In his early opposition to the Iraq war and other overseas misadventures in Bosnia, Haiti and El Salvador, Mark Danner is one of the most respected observers of American foreign policy. So it was a real honor to sit down with him and talk about his life both as an American and as a critic of America’s increasingly frayed relations with the rest of the world. Given his peripatetic life as a correspondent of overseas conflict, there’s a Homeric quality to Mark Danner, both as a man and as a writer. And so it wasn’t surprising that we began our conversation with Danner’s memories of how the Illiad inspired his life of travel and adventure.
Mark Danner is a writer, journalist and educator who has written on war and politics for more than three decades. He has covered conflicts in Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the greater Middle East, and has written extensively about the development of American foreign policy during the Cold War and the post-Cold War era, focussing on human rights and democracy. He has covered every American presidential election from the 2000 vote recount in Florida to Trump’s “Capitol Coup” in 2021. His books include Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War (2016), Torture and the Forever War (2014), Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War (2009), The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History (2006), Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror (2004), The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter’s Travel’s Through the 2000 Florida Vote Recount (2004) and The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (1994). Danner was a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Danner holds the Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California at Berkeley, and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
Episode 2039: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Mark Danner